Nock – System-wide sound and haptics for macOS (free, zero idle wake-ups)

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Nock — Your Mac, but you can feel it.

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Your Mac, but you can feel it.

Nock gives every scroll, keystroke, click, drag and swipe its own sound and haptic. Quietly, in your menu bar.

Download for macOS

Hear it →

macOS 14+

Universal — Apple Silicon & Intel

0 MB

Notarized by Apple

Turn on sound

Master

Mute

Scroll Anywhere on the page. Velocity-aware.

Deep<br>Sharp<br>Smooth<br>Crisp

Typing Type in the field. Space, Return and Delete are distinct.

Modern Mechanical<br>Minimal Mechanical

Mouse Click anywhere. Double- and right-click too.

Standard<br>Soft<br>Mechanical<br>Premium

Drag & drop Drag the puck. Ambient whoosh + soft landing.

Gestures Click-drag across the pad — left or right.

swipe across

Soft<br>Air<br>Modern

Haptic tick (synthesized live) The metallic tick layered under drag/swipe in the app. Sound only in the browser.

Play tick

Scroll

10 click voices. Fast scrolls tighten and soften into a freewheel. Vertical and horizontal.

Typing

Two mechanical profiles. Every key — Shift, Command, Fn, the whole F-row — has a sound.

Mouse

8 themes. Click, double-click and right-click each have their own voice.

Drag

Continuous ambient whoosh while dragging, with a soft landing on drop.

Gestures

Three-finger swipes between desktops and pages get a directional whoosh. 8 themes.

Haptics

Motion-coupled taps on Force Touch trackpads. Ten timbres. Independent from sound.

0 idle CPU wake-ups

0 audio in RAM

0 scroll voices

0 audio engine sleep

On haptics, honestly.<br>macOS has no continuous-haptic API. The Taptic Engine only fires discrete taps. Nock couples those taps to your motion, so texture appears when you move and silence when you don't — the closest the hardware allows. We don't claim continuous vibration, because it doesn't exist.

Privacy

Nock can see that you typed.<br>Never what you typed.

Timing only Nock reads only the timing of a key press and a coarse category — is it space, return, delete, or other. It never reads which letter.

Nothing stored No logs. No key buffer. No files written that describe your input, ever.

Nothing leaves your Mac The only network request Nock ever makes is checking for its own updates. That's the whole list.

How we prove it: the code path for keys reads the event type and modifier flags — never the character. That's it.

Why isn't it on the Mac App Store?

The App Store requires the App Sandbox, which forbids the system-wide event monitoring Nock is built on. Every app of this kind — Rectangle, Karabiner-Elements, BetterTouchTool — is distributed directly for the same reason. Nock is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens with no warnings.

Download Nock.dmg

Tiny 2.8 MB universal binary. Apple Silicon & Intel.

Download v1.0.0

macOS 14+

Signed

Notarized

Drag into Applications

Open the .dmg, drag the icon across, then eject the disk image.

Drag → Drop. That's it.

Open it

Notarized by Apple, so it just launches — no scary Gatekeeper warnings.

Trusted & verified by macOS Gatekeeper

Grant two permissions

In System Settings → Privacy & Security , add Nock under:

Accessibility<br>Scroll, mouse, drag and gesture sounds.

Input Monitoring<br>Keyboard sounds. Without it, typing is silent.

Both are needed. With only Accessibility, everything works except typing — which looks like a bug but isn't.

Accessibility<br>Input Monitoring

Nock lives in your menu bar

Click the hex icon to choose sounds, themes and haptic feel.

Quiet, ambient, always one click away.

I hear scroll and clicks, but typing is silent.›<br>You granted Accessibility but not Input Monitoring — they're separate permissions. Add Nock under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring , then quit and reopen Nock.

No sound at all.›<br>Check Accessibility is granted. Check the menu-bar icon isn't dimmed (dim means disabled). Check that Interaction Sounds is on in the menu.

I don't feel any haptics.›<br>Haptics need a Force Touch trackpad — any modern MacBook, or a Magic Trackpad. An external mouse can't produce them. Also check Haptic Feedback is on — it's a separate switch from sounds.

Gesture sounds don't play.›<br>Use a three-finger swipe. Requires Accessibility.

Sound stopped after I plugged in headphones.›<br>Nock follows the audio device automatically. If it doesn't switch over, quit and reopen.

Can I have haptics but no sound?›<br>Yes. Sound and haptics are fully independent — turn off Interaction Sounds and leave Haptic Feedback on. All four combinations work.

macOS says it can't check the app for malware.›<br>You have an old build. The current release is notarized by Apple and opens normally. Re-download from this page.

nock sound click drag haptics macos

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